Readers’ letters - April 13

Technology is becoming more widespread in todays society but is it leading to some people being left out? See letter

Published:17:40Wednesday 13 April 2016

We’re not all tech-savvy

I am very much in agreement with your recent correspondent regarding

the necessity now to apply online for replacement Blue Badges (WEP March 22) If ever there was an area requiring less ‘high-tech’ dealings, it is this one. Remember too that no reminders are sent out now when the badge is due to be renewed. Thank heaven the expiry date is more clearly shown on the new format badges.

It does not end there by any means. Turn to the Best Buy tables in the weekend press for ISA and savings accounts: 80 per cent of them can be opened online only. Now I read that the Census form could be replaced with data from Twitter and Zoopla.

Having online access is not yet compulsory in law but, by all practical means, we are heading in that direction. How long before the electoral register moves online only?

Then there’s my big aggravation.

Letters say: “Contact us at so-and-so dot co, or telephone such a number.”

One telephones, and the first two minutes are spent being told how to do the transaction online.

It’s a good job no human beings are actually involved in this because I am tempted to speak out: “Look here, I am exercising the alternative option, which you told me to do because I don’t have online access.”

N. J. Inkley

Address supplied

TAX

Laws work for the rich

Any readers who still think that Britain is a democracy need to think again.

Following the revelations of the Panama Papers, we have learned beyond doubt that the Super Rich (one per cent of the population) routinely take their money, trillions of pounds of it, to other countries to escape the tax law of the society in which they operate.

By so doing, they rob us (the 99 per cent) of cash for hospitals, schools, roads, and so on.

These are the people who brought this country to the brink of bankruptcy in 2008 and now show no qualms about doing it again.

They are abetted in this by politicians who live in the same bubble and no longer represent or work for us.

We have Sajid Javid, a former investment banker, now claiming to be doing his best for the steel industry; we have Brandon Lewis, a housing minister who runs a private rental portfolio; and we have a prime minister, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, who says that he will take action against the tax dodgers while blocking any serious attempts to do so.

All the time they bleat on about “doing nothing wrong” but it is not about what is illegal but about what is permitted which is the real scandal.

John Prance via email

NHS

Comparison was wrong

To conflate the junior doctors’ dispute with opponents of the Vietnam War, as depicted by Bernard Darbyshire (WEP April 12), in order to distort a slogan, reaches the depths of debate.

Comparing an intelligent body of people to mindless militants, bent only on financial improvement, is an insult to their protests against Jeremy Hunt’s heavy-handed negotiations.

A more apt comparison would be this country’s vast and continuing expenditure on needless wars, rather than on such essentials as a properly funded National Health Service.